Tuesday, July 24, 2018

The hardest and most-fraught struggle of my life has been
an economic one. It is often difficult to explain what this means this to
people, for whom this was not the case. Unlike contemporary kids who go back to
their parental home when they are having trouble being self-supporting, many of
us don’t or didn’t have that option. By age twenty-two, because of deaths and
remarriage, I no longer had a family to return to if I had nowhere else to go. My family of origin was never wealthy to begin
with. My parents, an insurance salesman who worked on commission and a secretary
were not regarded as accomplished in this culture. And following our mother’s untimely
death, my seventeen-year old sister and I took off for California in her car,
to try to make a life for ourselves.

Yes, it was easier to make a living in those years, even
in the Bay Area. Working part-time, paying rent and eating was possible then.
But there were things I had to learn. To act obsequious and smile were two
feats I found particularly difficult. I learned to swallow my pride when
gays, lesbians or Jews were insulted, and this happened more often than I’d
expected. Even though I was a chronic insomniac, I managed to get up early and
go each day to a place where I was neither welcomed nor respected. You could
call it prostitution. It was certainly soul-draining, humiliating and
degrading. I did it for money, because it was necessary. I did it
because I had no other options.

In lesbian activist groups in which I was a participant, friends
would tell me how odd it was that I did such politically incorrect work. They
said they could only perform a job if it was meaningful and fulfilling. I
listened politely not bothering to explain that I didn’t have that luxury. Some
of them didn’t procure work until their early thirties. Many never did get
paying work and lived on trust funds while pursing art or politics. They put
their energy into activities that had the potential of changing the world and
looked down on folks like myself. I envied them. They were often very nice
people who knew the right behavior for every situation. This knowledge of propriety
was a totally new concept to me. I had trouble holding on to jobs, partly
because I was too honest.

On three different jobs, all of which I was hoping to
hold for a relatively long time, I was fired. It usually happened after I came
out as lesbian. On one, after being outed in the SF Chronicle in a Sunday Gay
Pride Parade, I was fired Monday, the very next day. Were these firings
homophobic? Of course. But they were also class-related because of my poor
social skills.

When I visited Cuba, two years ago, I met lots of very
poor people. They had tons of issues due to poverty but fear of having no food
and no place to live because of lack of money was not among them. Their rent
and some basic food staples were given them by the government, but most make
less than the equivalent of twenty dollars a month. Insufficient as it was,
they had a safety net, unlike the potential free fall in a deep well that we
have here in the USA.

I don’t need to worry and struggle anymore. In later life I learned my lesson. I went back to school, Because I
could keep only union jobs, I looked for that protection and my work life as an older worker was easier. But my entire journey is part of my identity. When a political person who
never experienced the anxiety and pressure of needing to earn their living,
speaks to me as though our allotment of “privilege” is the same, I get
extremely angry. If I bring up class issues in response, it is often
dismissed as a sour grapes thing. “She can’t help her background,” might be
said. Of course, she can’t change her
circumstances, we are all born with some assets and liabilities.

But now, more than ever, white folks are acknowledging
the way race has helped them move through the world. This is a change for the
better. It is the same with class advantage. No-one is saying they hate you but
our identities are not the same. Never make assumptions that your story is true
for anyone else. Open your eyes to the many different routes we all must take
to arrive at the same place. And like all members of a wide variety of groups, try
to see people in all their identities, all their colors. Life is not just where
you wind up. It is also an equation involving the distance traveled.